The best dramatic movie about BBSes was created not in the 1980s, but last year, 2005. And it wasn't a movie, it was a TV series. And it wasn't made in the United States - it was made in Japan.
It's called Densha Otoko (Train Man), and in my opinion it is the best dramatization of using a BBS, ever, in a visual medium.

The end of the year is upon us, and enough blogs and news sites have already written great articles on the best games of the year. Therefore, instead of being lost amongst the white noise of award features, I'd like to point out a few trends which I felt were especially important during 2005.

The Best of 2005 is a celebration of the best games reviewed here at Jayisgames over the past year. It is not an exhaustive list of all the best games available since we can only review the games that we come to know about. If you have a game, or are part of a team that produces them, and would like to have your game considered for a future review here, then please use my email address in the sidebar to submit a link.

November 2005

"Mind Hacks already told you about Jabberwacky, the winner of this year's Loebner prize for the chatbot that comes closest to passing the Turing Test (to pass, a judge must be unable to tell whether she's talking to the chatbot or another human)."

"Last week gamesblog covered Persuasive Games' latest release Airport Insecurity, "a game about inconvenience and the tradeoffs between security and rights in American airports". I grabbed Ian Bogost, one half of the company (and one-half of the blog watercoolergames) to explain exactly what he means by "serious games"."

Since my last three “hack” posts on bookmarklets, RSS and Technorati were so popular, I thought I would follow up with my ten favorite blogging hacks. Don't ask me why, but I like the number 10. These work on most if not all of the major weblog platforms, including TypePad, Blogger and Wordpress. (This post is in memory of Ben Hammersly's killed book, Blogging Hacks, may it RIP)

What does it mean to talk of a grammar of game design? And does specifying such a grammar give us an insight into the underlying structure of games, or a new method for approaching game design - or both? Because games vary from pure mathematical formalisms (at the ludic extreme) to behavioural descriptions (at the opposite extreme), any formal reductionistic system will either be focused primarily on the former, or require sufficient latitude to express practically infinite diversity. One such approach is to define a categorial grammar of game design.

"I was reflecting upon the differences between turn-based and real-time game worlds. In the summer we started this with "Is Love and War Turn-based?". From love to war the claim then was that the meaning to the pauses between turns was different than compared to, say, the moments in a Real-Time Strategy game, or to the half-hours in MMOG grinds. I too think the meaning of fear is different..."

“Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution“ is the first book from husband-and-wife team Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby. Chaplin, a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Fortune and Salon, agreed to answer some questions about the writing process for us.